David George Joseph Malouf Biography

David Malouf was born in Brisbane in 1934. His father's family had immigrated to Australia from the Lebanon in the 1880s and his mother's family had arrived from London before the First World War. In 1955, Malouf graduated from the University of Queensland and then taught in the Department of English there until he moved to England in 1959. He remained in England, working as a teacher at Holland Park Comprehensive School and then Birkenhead, during which time his first selection of poems appeared in Australia in the collection Four Poets in 1962.

Returning to Australia in 1968, Malouf lectured in English at the University of Sydney until 1977, during which time he published three further collections of poetry Bicycle and other poems (1970), Neighbours in a Thicket: poems (1974), Poems 1975-76 (1976), edited a collection of Australian verse titled Gesture of a Hand (1975) and published his first novel Johnno (1975). In 1978, he published his second novel An Imaginary Life, the dream-like tale of Ovid in exile, which was a critical success and has become a classic of Australian literature. In the same year he moved to Campagnatico in Tuscany, Italy, and dedicated himself to writing full-time, producing three further collections of poetry, three further novels/novellas and a collection of short stories before returning to Sydney in 1985 where he still lives today.